The manufacture of wooden musical instruments by conventional methods is both expensive and time-consuming. Typically, wooden musical instruments are made of many different components which must be first manufactured and then assembled by skilled workers, thereby increasing manufacturing expense.
Prior art stringed musical instruments have been devised to address these problems. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,396,823 (Hoshino) discloses a guitar that is made largely of plastic. A typical guitar would include a soundbox, and a neck extending therefrom to a head. The soundbox includes a wooden side, an adjoining wooden back portion, and a wooden soundboard on top of the side opposite to the back portion. In Hoshino, the side and back portion are integrally formed of plastic as a single piece. This considerably reduces manufacturing time and expense. However, the resulting guitar may suffer in terms of both its appearance and acoustic properties.
Accordingly, a stringed musical instrument that retains the desirable acoustic characteristics resulting from a wooden construction, but is less expensive and time-consuming to manufacture, is desirable.